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Madrazo.”
    “Anyone tried to contact her?”
    “She was allowed one phone call. She used it to call Richard.”
    “If she’s indicted?”
    “Full indictment will result in a very lengthy prison term. A lengthy prison term could very well be a death sentence.”
    I looked out the window once more. A limo was pulling out of the gate beside the guard shack. Probably the governor himself, hightailing it to New York City and civilization.
    I turned back to Tony.
    “Barnes is a powerful guy,” I said. “Why doesn’t he strike a deal with the Attorney General, negotiate her out? At least try and have her extradited?”
    “Richard’s business has already suffered plenty over the negative press Renata received when she published Godchild .” He was putting on his camel hair overcoat. “The DA was prepared to indict her for second-degree murder in the death of her own baby boy, Charlie. Only he couldn’t find enough credible evidence to substantiate an accusation of murder by forcible drowning.”
    “Then get the magazine to confirm her side of the story. Have them prove she was on assignment in the desert.”
    “What magazine? There is no magazine. She was going to sell the piece on spec.” Now he was putting on a blue fedora, pulling the wide brim down over his forehead, cocking it just slightly over his right eye. “Besides, sounds like a weak attempt at a false alibi.” Outside the window, yet another limo pulling up, the electronic gates swinging open. “Barnes fears that if it gets out about Renata being busted on Mexican soil, he’ll have to go through the same kind of public shit storm all over again.”
    “If Renata is such a great author,” I said, “why risk writing an article about smuggling drugs? Why not hang out by the beach, pump out a novel once a year or so?”
    “Renata is a hands-on writer. Apparently she needs to be in the middle of a battle if she’s going to write about war or in the middle of a homicide if she’s going to write about murder or in the center of a drug-trafficking operation if she’s going to do something on drugs and the women who smuggle them. She’s not content to write a piece based upon outside observations, third-hand accounts and the internet. What she wants is the real experience.”
    “Thus all that commotion over Godchild ”
    “She’s what they call a method writer, Keeper. Meaning in order to accurately translate the experience on paper, she must in some capacity participate in the experience.”
    “Thank God she isn’t writing about suicide.”
    “Save those remarks for me, paisan,” Tony said. “Your future client will not find them the least bit amusing.”
    For what seemed a while, I watched the sun shine against the marble floor.
    Then, “What Barnes wants from me is to find a way to get her out. Is that it?”
    “What he wants is for you to go down there and use any means necessary to break her out. And he’s prepared to pay extremely well for it. Two hundred thousand cash, plus expenses, no questions asked, absolutely no press. Plenty of money to repay me for the repairs at Bill’s and for keeping you out of the joint and for protecting your license.”
    I exhaled. “I saw the Buick.” I said. “In the cemetery.”
    “I know about what you think you saw,” Tony said.
    “It happened,” I said. “I was there.”
    He nodded, but like the cops before him, I knew he didn’t believe me.
    “Did you see a driver?” he asked.
    “The windows are tinted.”
    “And there was a blizzard,” he said.
    I turned back to the window. The two guards who manned the shack were standing outside in the cold, smoking cigarettes and laughing. I was thinking about risk. How I didn’t stand a chance of getting past the visitor’s gates of a Mexican prison without getting shot to pieces. A plan like Tony’s would require connections inside and out, not to mention maps, layouts, guns, ground and air transport, and a safe house. Just for starters. I